Photo: A Kroger store in Malta, Ohio. Credit: Flickr/Nicholas Eckhart (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Are you worried about food prices? If so, you are not alone. Some 70% of consumers are “extremely” or “very concerned” about the cost of food at grocery stores. The pending $25 billion merger of the Kroger and Albertsons grocery chains threatens to continue the trend of monopolistic price-gouging while leading to the sell-off and possible closure of hundreds of neighborhood stores. Federal regulators, attorneys general from nine states and the grocery workers’ union are in court opposing the merger. Even if the merger is halted, there is no guarantee that the trends of rising prices and grocery and pharmacy deserts in working class neighborhoods will be reversed. Is there an alternative?
The merger between the two biggest grocery chains, with 710,000 workers between them, has been in the works since 2022. Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to be “competitive” against Walmart and Amazon. If the merger goes through, the new entity would control 13% of the national grocery market. According to Supermarket News, the two chains combined control 57% of the market in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. The Federal Trade Commission would require that 579 stores in cities where the two chains overlap be sold off to C&S Wholesale Grocers, which owns the Piggly Wiggly chain, in order to keep the merged company from having too great a share of the market.
Many concerns with merger
Consumers and workers worry that C&S will not be able to successfully run the divested stores which could then be shuttered, leading to neighborhoods without a full-service grocery store, as well as job losses for grocery workers. This fear is based on recent experience with the merger between Albertsons and Safeway, in which Haggen bought nearly 150 “excess” stores in the Pacific Northwest, then ran them into the ground before selling itself back to Albertsons. Several stores closed permanently as a result.
Despite Kroger’s assurances, the merger will likely further fuel price-gouging. The FTC is currently holding hearings in court to decide if the merger should be blocked. While testifying to a Federal Trade Commission attorney Aug. 27, Kroger’s Senior Director for Pricing, Andy Groff, admitted Kroger had price-gouged. In an internal email, he had written, “On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation.”
Of course, Groff and Kroger are not simply one bad apple among the whole bunch of massive grocery chains. A report by the FTC in March showed that the grocery industry as a whole had increased prices far beyond any increases in their own costs. The report stated, “Some firms seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further hike prices to increase their profits, and profits remain elevated even as supply chain pressures have eased.”
United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents grocery workers, opposes the merger. Daniel Clay, president of Portland’s UFCW 555 testified at the FTC hearing on the merger on Aug. 28. Fred Meyer workers won major wage increases on their last contract. Clay explained a merger’s impact: When workers strike at one store, they urge shoppers to go to a different union store, bringing additional pressure on the bosses. A merger between the two largest chains would weaken the union’s ability to use this tactic.
Role of the FTC
The FTC is a regulatory agency that was founded in 1914, at a time when the negative impact of monopolies had become a major political issue. Anti-trust laws were passed to reign in the monopolies without actually doing away with the capitalist system that creates them. Even this limited restraint is under the gun; Kroger has filed to reject the FTC’s merger plan, based on recent Supreme Court rulings that undermine the FTC’s authority. Meanwhile, Project 2025 shows that the extreme right has its sights on eliminating the FTC altogether in favor of the completely unfettered pursuit of profits, even if it means grocery workers lose their jobs and consumers lose the ability to afford or even find healthy food.
The GOP is not alone in wanting to undermine the FTC. According to an article in CNN, “Some business leaders and wealthy donors are hopeful that Harris will adopt more centrist policies as she outlines her agenda, especially by dialing back Biden-era antitrust crackdowns. ‘CEOs are wildly excited about Harris,’ Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, told CNN in a phone interview.”
The socialist solution: Seize the top 100 corporations!
Is there another way? Socialist presidential candidate Claudia De la Cruz and her running mate Karina Garcia propose in their platform that the top 100 corporations be taken over and their resources used to meet the needs of the people:
The 100 largest corporations in America should be seized from their billionaire owners and turned into public property – owned by the working class that created their vast wealth in the first place. This could serve as the foundation for a total reorganization of the economy in a way that guarantees that everyone in society will have their basic needs met, massively rebuild urban and rural infrastructure, and bring down prices and rents … Inflation would be eliminated with an across-the-board price freeze.
Just imagine what this could mean for working people. Instead of an inadequate system of SNAP and food banks, everyone would have access to affordable, nutritious food. There is no rational reason why billionaires should control the food supply for millions of people. They had nothing to do with creating the food or bringing it to market; all that was done by workers. We can’t depend on federal regulators and state attorney generals to defend our basic human rights — we need to unite and fight for them. Taking over the biggest 100 corporations would be a good start.
